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A comment on Where has all the money in the world gone?. Parent comment

Re:Where has all the money in the world gone? by planetguy on Sunday June 24, 2012 @08:36PM (#4154647)
The periodic cancellation of all debts thing was one bit that I found fascinating and wished had been expanded upon. I mean, what actually happened historically after that?

I mean, did the credit market dry up overnight? Once the precedent has been set that the king can cancel everyone else's debts for no reason, what reason would anyone have for lending money? Or did some folks come up with "un-cancellable" debts which are deemed not to be cancelled in jubilees (under penalty of private leg-breaking)?

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Re:Where has all the money in the world gone? by eli_gottlieb on Sunday June 24, 2012 @10:33PM (#4154854)
What actually happened in Ancient Israel was: the market (and the society) worked around it. Creditors lent less money in the run-up to a Jubilee year, but once that had passed, they also came up with various religious/legal rationalizations/arrangements to allow them to effectively enforce debts.

The part I found interesting, and wanted to read more about, was the Golden Age of Islam, in which a financial and commercial system developed (in fact, developed free-market ideology) entirely without usurious debts of any kind.

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